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# Armed to the teeth: the problem with pit bulls

##  Pit bulls are increasingly replacing knives as the weapon of choice among
gang members, with equally deadly results. Gordon Rayner joins the police dog
units as they raid suspected owners, and asks where the law that was meant to
protect us went wrong.

400

227

TelegraphPlayer-7593222

[Link to this video][1]

By Gordon Rayner  7:00AM BST 15 Apr 2010

[Comments][2]

It is the morning school run in Bethnal Green, east London, when five police
vehicles pull up in convoy outside a low-rise council block. Twelve police
officers jump out and stride silently along a narrow walkway to the door of a
second-floor maisonette. An elderly woman, who could be forgiven for thinking
she is witnessing an anti-terror raid as she sees helmets and riot shields go
by, leans out from next door, and is promptly told to get back inside.

At a signal from his commander, a constable attacks the door with a metal
battering ram and as the lock gives way his colleagues move in. There are
shouts from inside the flat, and a blue shoulder-bag is thrown from a back
window in an attempt to hide the cannabis and cocaine it contains. After
arresting and handcuffing a 27-year-old man who lives here with his mother and
teenage sister, the officers find what they are after: pit bull terriers.

The raid has been organised by the Metropolitan Police's Status Dog Unit,
which was set up last year to deal with the escalating problem of illegal
fighting dogs. Last year 5,221 people, a quarter of them children, were
admitted to hospital in England after being attacked by dogs, compared with a
total of just over 3,000 a decade ago. Thousands more were treated as
outpatients.

Within 10 minutes, two pit bulls are led out of the property by dog handlers.
On this occasion the dogs come quietly, on the end of a rope leash, but the
officers know that they may be attacked by dogs or their owners, who are often
violent too, and so they had come prepared for the worst, carrying carbon
dioxide fire extinguishers (the most effective means of keeping a pit bull at
bay) and snaffles - metal poles with a loop on the end, for snaring aggressive
animals at arm's length.

'You never know what's behind that door,' Sgt Ian McParland, the operational
head of the Status Dog Unit, says. 'One of our officers went into a property
recently and the owner threw a pit bull at him. He ended up in hospital with
bites and tears on his arm.'

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15 Apr 2010

The Bethnal Green flat is typical of what the unit's officers find when they
carry out search warrants, usually acting on tip-offs from members of the
public or **[RSPCA][6]** or council dog wardens. One pit bull is discovered in
a filthy living-room, where it has ripped sofa cushions to shreds, while
another is found in an upstairs bedroom. Two Staffordshire bull terriers that
also share the tiny flat are allowed to stay - they are not banned breeds.

'Some of the places we go into are absolutely appalling,' McParland says.
'We've been in flats where one of the bedrooms is given over to the dogs to
defecate in because they are not allowed out. We've found dogs living in cages
in under-stair cupboards, or flats where there's hardly a stick of furniture
and the floor is covered in newspaper, urine, faeces, and a cage in the corner
containing a bitch and puppies.'

The Status Dog Unit was set up in March last year after the Met's dog handlers
found they were spending so much time dealing with dangerous dog seizures that
their own working dogs were sitting idle. The unit's six full-time officers
are certainly not short of work. The Bethnal Green raid is one of 14 carried
out on the same day in the borough of Tower Hamlets, which has one of the
largest fighting dog populations in London. In total, 12 dogs are seized
during today's Operation Canis raids, and four people are arrested, either for
drugs offences or for obstructing the police.

In the early part of this decade the Met was seizing a steady average of about
42 illegal dogs per year, then in 2006-07 the number suddenly jumped to 173
and has doubled every year since. In the past 12 months the Status Dog Unit
has seized 1,259 illegal dogs, the vast majority of them pit bull types. 'At
the same time that gang culture was becoming established here, hip-hop and rap
singers in the US started using pit bulls in their pop videos, and suddenly it
became fashionable to have one of these dogs,' McParland says. 'They became a
status symbol for a lot of the youth in London.'

But pit bulls also have a more practical use. They are as deadly as any knife
or gun, and with one crucial advantage: while carrying a gun brings a prison
sentence of up to 10 years and a knife four years, anyone caught possessing an
illegal dog faces a maximum prison sentence of six months, which is rarely
imposed. Their value to criminals was graphically illustrated last month by
the case of Chrisdian Johnson, a gang member from south London who became the
first killer to be convicted of a murder in which a fighting dog was used. He
was the also the first killer to be caught using DNA from his own dog, after
advances in DNA technology enabled police to prove that it was his dog that
had been involved in the attack.

Johnson's victim, a 16-year-old rival called Oluwaseyi Ogunyemi, was trying to
climb a fence to get away from Johnson when he released his bull terrier,
Tyson, which dragged Ogunyemi to the ground and held him in its teeth before
Johnson stabbed the boy to death. Most victims of fighting dogs, though,
simply happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, such as five-year-
old Ellie Lawrenson, mauled to death by her uncle's pit bull in St Helens,
Merseyside, in 2007, and John-Paul Massey, four, who died after being attacked
by his uncle's bull mastiff in Liverpool last November.

For those of us old enough to remember, those horrific attacks on children
brought a terrible sense of deja vu. In May 1991 a six-year-old girl called
Rukhsana Khan suffered such appalling injuries in an attack by a pit bull
terrier in Bradford that pictures of her ravaged face dominated the news for
days. The public cried out for action to outlaw what the tabloids termed
'devil dogs', forcing Kenneth Baker, the Home Secretary at the time, to rush
through a new law, the Dangerous Dogs Act, aimed at wiping out Britain's
entire pit bull population. The Act made it illegal to own or breed four types
of fighting dog: pit bulls; the dogo argentino, a dog bred for hunting boar;
the Japanese tosa, a huge mastiff and the world's oldest breed of fighting
dog; and the fila brasileiro, bred specifically for aggression. The Dangerous
Dogs Act did have a temporary effect on pit bull numbers, which declined in
the 1990s to such an extent that they dropped off the political agenda.

But, under pressure from animal charities, in 1997 Parliament watered down the
Act by introducing an amendment giving magistrates discretionary powers to
give illegal breeds back to their owners, subject to certain restrictions, if
the owners are deemed responsible enough to keep the dogs under control.
(Magistrates decide on the basis of evidence given in reports by the police,
defendants' evidence, and supporting documents such as letters from vets or
neighbours. Notably, seven months before Ogunyemi's murder Chrisdian Johnson
had been allowed by a court to keep Tyson after he agreed to have the dog
microchipped and insured.) Unsurprisingly, pit bull numbers immediately
started to rise again, and the population is now thought to have passed the
1991 figure of 10,000.

Kenneth (now Lord) Baker believes the 1997 amendment was a mistake. 'The
intention of the Dangerous Dogs Act was to eliminate breeds like pit bulls in
this country,' he says. 'For the first five years it worked very well, but as
soon as the Government gave in to animal charities the whole thing was doomed.
There is no need for anyone to have these dogs, and to suggest that you can
somehow educate the owners - well, I just don't think that's realistic if you
look at who the owners are.'

And while the Act allows for a maximum prison sentence of up to six months, or
a £5,000 fine, owners know that custodial sentences are almost unheard of. On
September 25 last year, Sgt McParland was called to one of the worst incidents
he has attended. A 23-year-old woman was alone in a flat in Tottenham, north
London, with her boyfriend's two pit bulls when one of them suddenly turned on
her, without warning. 'By the time the emergency services arrived her arm had
effectively been torn off at the elbow,' McParland says. 'It was hanging by a
thread of skin and couldn't be saved. When I got there the dogs had been shot
by armed officers and the woman had been taken away in an ambulance, but it
was a grim scene. There was a lot of blood. The owner of the dogs got a
12-month conditional discharge and a 12-month ban from keeping dogs, with
costs of £330.' Is he shocked by the leniency of the sentence? 'I'll let you
draw your own conclusions,' he says.

It is hardly surprising, then, that current sentences hold no fear for the
owners of such dogs. Gordon, a 22-year-old from Shepherd's Bush, west London,
is the proud owner of a cross-bred fighting dog that affords him the all-
important 'respect' on the streets and makes him feel protected. 'Nowadays,
that's just as good as having a knife,' he says with a nod to his dog, Rocky.
'The damage that could do to a person if it's used in the right way, that
could inflict more pain than a knife because it's going to be crushing bones
and piercing skin. If you were to own a dog and it killed someone, the
sentences ain't that big. I've thought of the consequences of being arrested
but if you've got options it's better to let the dog bite the person than your
life being ended.'

Disturbing as his attitude may be, Gordon sums up the mentality of many status
dog owners. 'Ninety per cent of the problem is with the owners, not the dogs,'
McParland says. 'Most of these kids genuinely love their dogs, but they don't
understand the dogs enough to be able to look after them properly. If someone
carries a knife or a gun, you have to aim that gun at someone for it to be
dangerous. Dogs don't have to be aimed at anyone. Pit bulls can be well-
socialised animals, just like any other breed, if they are well treated and
trained correctly, but all too often they're not.'

It is too early to say which category the two dogs taken from the flat in
Bethnal Green will fall into. Like every other dog that is seized, they will
be taken to one of 12 dog pounds used by the Met (their locations are a
closely guarded secret to prevent unwelcome visits from owners). This is only
the beginning of a process that lasts an average of six months before a dog's
fate is decided. As the dogs found during Operation Canis arrive at the
kennels, McParland and his team assess each one to decide whether the animal
can be classed as a 'pit bull type' dog (or another banned breed), depending
on physical characteristics such as the shape of the head. The officers must
then write a report for the Crown Prosecution Service and, in the case of a
not guilty plea by the owner, appear in court to give evidence when
magistrates decide whether the dog should be destroyed. Each dog will take up
an average of three days of an officer's time, from the moment he applies for
a warrant to the eventual disposal of the case by a court. The Met currently
has 471 dogs in its kennels awaiting their day in court. Next year's budget
for kennelling dangerous dogs is £2.85 million in London alone.

Only half of the dogs that are seized by the Met end up being destroyed. The
rest are returned to their owners, with no rehabilitation, but after being put
on a register of exempted animals. None, however, can be found a new home; the
Dangerous Dogs Act deems this to be too risky and allows only for dogs to be
either destroyed or returned to their original owner.

One thing is obvious about the two dogs seized in Bethnal Green: they are
healthy, with no signs of injury, suggesting they have not been involved in
fighting. Organised dog fights, where animals fight to the death in a 12ft
square pit, are relatively rare, and when they do happen they are surrounded
by such secrecy that police seldom know about them. The far greater problem is
so-called chain fighting, or 'rolling', when two owners allow their animals to
attack each other while being held on a leash in a park, to prove who has the
toughest dog.

The RSPCA, which until six years ago received only two reports per month of
dog fighting, now has two or three calls a day to rescue dogs that have either
been involved in chain fighting or have been tortured by their owners to make
them more aggressive. Typically they have been beaten with sticks or burnt
with cigarettes, forcing the dogs to bite back, then rewarded with food until
the dog learns that it must attack to be rewarded.

In order to strengthen the animal's jaws many owners train them to hang from
tree branches by their teeth or to tear bark from the trunks, damaging or
destroying thousands of trees across the country. In some London parks 80 per
cent of trees have suffered damage from dog biting, forcing councils to spend
tens of thousands of pounds putting protective guards around trees.

For the owners, having the most vicious dog can bring financial rewards, as
well as status. The most savage animals become prized studs or bitches for
backstreet breeders who sell the illegal offspring - genetically programmed to
attack - for up to £500 each. Such is the demand for pit bulls that many are
being born in battery-farm conditions, in cages stacked on top of each other
in tiny flats.

'We see some very sorry sights,' McParland says. 'We did a warrant in
Tottenham recently when we found 30 pit bulls in a small two-bedroom house,
and we did another job where we found 21 pit bulls in a one-bedroom
maisonette. The breeder had even kept details recording payments made in £25
weekly instalments for the puppies.'

On another police raid, this time on a council semi in Yardley, Birmingham,
officers from the country's only other dedicated dangerous dog unit find
evidence of dog breeding. In the kitchen of an upstairs flat is a 3 x 2ft cage
shoehorned between a fridge and the wall, its bars bent out of shape by
powerful puppies that have tried to escape. The lino on the floor of the
kitchen has been ripped up by a dog's claws and the door frame has been chewed
from floor to waist height. 'This has been used as a whelping room,' says Pc
Keith Evans, one of two officers based at the West Midlands Police's Dangerous
Dogs Unit. 'The dogs have been put in here to mate, then the bitch and the
puppies have been kept in the cage.'

Evidence found in the flat reveals how closely the ownership of pit bulls is
linked to criminality. In the living-room, a wiry young man in a woolly hat
sits handcuffed on the stained brown-suede sofa. He is not the occupant of the
flat, and he is not saying much, but when an officer finds a small bag of
cannabis on the glass-topped coffee table, between a mouldering Pot Noodle and
a jumbo-sized bottle of Coke, he finally gives them his name. A quick check
over the police radio reveals that he is wanted for assault.

As the other officers in the nine-strong team search the flat they find
several concealed knives and a meat cleaver hidden under a mattress. They
search the loft and find it lined with reflective foil; an air vent has been
cut into the roof, heat lamps hang from the joists, and trays of plant pots,
with the stumps of harvested cannabis plants poking from them, cover the
floor, fed by a sophisticated automatic watering system.

'There is a massive link between drugs and firearms and dangerous dogs,' Evans
says. 'Often the dogs will be used to guard drugs, cash or weapons, but the
most serious criminals won't take the dogs outside because they won't risk
being stopped for having an illegal dog. Dogs that are kept for fighting won't
be allowed outside either - the giveaway when we raid those houses is that
they often have running machines to exercise the dogs indoors. They tend to
have crude medical kits to treat the animals' injuries, including Euthatal,
which is used for putting dogs down.'

On the way back from the raid in Yardley, Pc Evans stops off at one of the
kennels where the pit bulls are housed as they await a court date. It has the
look and feel of a canine death row. One pit bull gives an extraordinary
display of its power as it jumps up at a metal rope holding open the trapdoor
to its bedding area and bites clean through the quarter-inch-thick wire with
one snap of its jaws.

Yet Evans has no compunction about opening the door of one of the cages and
putting his hand in to stroke a dog that moments before looked, frankly,
deranged. 'With most dogs you can play with them,' he says as he strokes the
pit bull's chin. 'But with a pit bull you mustn't arouse it, as they've been
bred to reach an extremely high state of arousal very quickly, and for a long
period. If you play with a cocker spaniel it might nip your finger if you do
the wrong thing, but with a pit bull it will bite and hold, and that's what's
causing the life-changing injuries we are seeing.'

Back at headquarters, Evans and his colleague Pc Tony Mills unload an almost
medieval array of armour and defensive weaponry. Each officer has what is
effectively a chainmail suit, encased in fabric, which will stop a dog's teeth
or a knife. The officers are also testing out a new piece of kit: an
electrified riot shield with metal strips on the front that will deliver a
40,000-volt electric shock to a dog if it tries to attack.

'Pit bulls have a very high tolerance of pain,' Evans says. 'They say that if
a pit bull is fighting another dog you could hack off its leg and it would
carry on fighting. Hence the injuries from a sustained dog attack will be far
greater than from a gunshot wound from a low-velocity weapon.'

Rukhsana Khan, now 25, whose injuries were the spur for the Dangerous Dogs
Act, still bears the scars of the attack in which she suffered more than 30
separate wounds. She still has nightmares about the attack and says she
'freezes' whenever she sees a dog. Like so many other victims, she believes
the inadequacies of the Dangerous Dogs Act are being horribly exposed.

Critics say one of the major failings of the Act is that it targets one type
of dog while allowing others that are equally dangerous to slip through the
net because they are other breeds. Tellingly, in the same period that two
children have been killed by fighting dogs, three others have been killed by
dogs that are not covered by the Act, including three-month-old Jaden Mack,
who was killed by a Staffordshire bull terrier and a Jack Russell at his
grandmother's home in Ystrad Mynach, south Wales, in February last year.

'If a dog that is not covered by the Act bites a child in someone's home, we
don't have any powers to intervene, even though that dog might be potentially
more dangerous than a well-socialised pit bull,' Evans says.

Taylor Leadbeater, aged two, almost lost her life in Eltham, south-east
London, last month because of this very loophole. She was attacked by her
family's French bull mastiff, Trigger, which virtually tore off her lower jaw.
The dog had tried to bite another member of her family two weeks earlier,
prompting her grandmother to inquire about having the dog destroyed, but a vet
told her it was not classed as a dangerous dog and so they could not
intervene.

'Breed legislation isn't working,' says RSPCA chief inspector Jan Eachus, a
dangerous dog project officer assigned to the Status Dog Unit. 'No human
beings were killed by pit bulls before 1991, but since then we've had one
death after another, mostly caused by cross-breeds. Dangerous dogs are not
born, dangerous dogs are made, through abuse and neglect, and they can be any
breed.'

In the US, an alternative approach adopted in some states has produced such
dramatic results that the RSPCA will lobby the next Government to borrow
heavily from it and overhaul the Dangerous Dogs Act. Pioneered in Multnomah
County, Oregon, the US-style legislation, which covers dangerous dogs of all
breeds, led to a 72 per cent reduction in the number of repeat attacks by dogs
within a year of its being introduced.

'We decided that the answer was to target behaviour, rather than breeds,' Mike
Oswald, the head of Multnomah County Animal Services, says. 'Our system has
three categories of offence, ranging from low-level behaviour, when a dog
menaces someone without causing injury, to the most serious offences when
someone is attacked. If someone allows their dog to commit a minor offence, we
classify the dog as potentially dangerous and the owner has to pay an annual
premium for a dog licence. We might also require the owner to muzzle the dog
when it is off their property or build a secure enclosure for it, and
obviously in the most serious cases we can destroy the animal.

'We found that the public were much more willing to report incidents as a
result, and owners were more willing to co-operate. We went from a position
where 25 per cent of dogs would be involved in a second incident after we had
been made aware of them, to just seven per cent causing any more problems.'
Even though Multnomah, which includes Portland, a city of 550,000 people, has
an expanding dog population, there has been no increase in the number of
injuries caused by dogs since the programme began in 1986.

Claire Robinson, the government relations manager for the RSPCA, is currently
drawing up detailed proposals for a new law that will be a hybrid of the
Oregon model and the current British law, giving the police better powers to
intervene against any dog that menaces or intimidates people, while retaining
the power to seize specific breeds.

'Everyone recognises that there are ways the current laws can be improved,'
she says. 'The key is to have a law that allows us to take action at a very
early stage, regardless of the breed of dog, which might just be offering
advice to an owner whose dog is barking at people over the fence, but which
would encourage much more responsible ownership of all types of dog. If a dog
has attacked another animal, a court could impose a control order, which would
apply in private places as well as public, and we are also suggesting a new
offence of using a dog as a weapon, in addition to the current powers.'

The RSPCA also advocates compulsory microchipping of all dogs, and a
Government consultation currently being carried out into ways of improving the
Dangerous Dogs Act has looked at the possibility of a register of dogs, run
along similar lines to car registration, which would require owners to notify
the authorities of changes of address and changes of ownership, as well as
compulsory third party insurance. But the Government has already ruled out
compulsory insurance, accepting that it would be ignored by the owners who
present the biggest problem, while police believe they would have the same
problem with a national register.

The RSPCA says it has had 'positive' feedback from all the major political
parties to the idea of a new law combining the US-style system and current
breed-specific legislation, and hopes it will be picked up quickly by
whichever is in power after the election. For the 14 people who are
hospitalised by dog attacks every day, those changes can't come soon enough.

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